The dream dies: “F*** no, I’m not running for Senate,” says Kid Rock

Ah, that’s a shame. I really thought there was a chance there’d be a victory party next November at which a new senator was introduced to the tune of “Balls In Your Mouth.”

The best part of this exchange with Howard Stern is KR treating the idea of a Senate run as palpably insane, as if that were any obstacle in post-Trump American politics. While he and Stern were discussing this, the president and the head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee were having a slapfight on Twitter like two eighth-graders, for cripes sake. Says WaPo’s Alexandra Petri, “Literally the only thing saving us from Senator Kid Rock is Kid Rock’s statesmanlike restraint.” It turns out, when it comes to decorum, Kid Rock is more of a Romney Republican than a Trump Republican after all.

Maybe he’ll still get to play “Balls In Your Mouth” at the inauguration gala after Trump wins reelection.

The last three polls taken of a Debbie Stabenow/Kid Rock race had the Democrat ahead, but in two polls it was by single digits — and in a fourth poll, conducted in late July, KR actually led by three. It was suspicious from the start that he was teasing running for an office coincidentally at the same time he was preparing to release an album but it felt less like a pure PR stunt than a trial balloon. it wouldn’t have been that odd to see a goof mutate into a semi-serious bid depending upon the public’s reception to the idea — and given the interest from Bannon and other Republican players, the reception was warm enough to make a go of it. He almost certainly would have won the GOP nomination given his name recognition. In the end I think he decided against running not because he was afraid he’d lose but because he was afraid he’d win. He’s going to trade a rock-star lifestyle to go sit in appropriations meetings with Rob Portman and Susan Collins? C’mon.

Or is there another reason?

Gotta say, this feels like the beginning of a long, emphatic backpedal, now that he's alienated some fans and lost popularity in Detroit… https://t.co/1v3FzOcAQM

Kid Rock and Eminem were both at a Pistons game last week. When Eminem appeared on the Jumbotron, the crowd cheered. When Kid Rock appeared, some booed — an experience he’s probably not used to in Michigan. Eminem recently went off on Trump, going so far as to tell his fans to choose between him and the president, while KR has been touted as a possible Republican candidate for months. Maybe this really was a trial balloon and it went worse than he thought. Rather than gamble a chunk of his fan base on a quixotic Senate run, he may have thought better of it in the end and decided to play the whole thing off as a joke.

He hasn’t closed the door completely, though. Well, no, he has, but you have to do a little “don’t make me come down there!” shtick after you’ve a thrown a scare into the political establishment and then backed off:

“If they keep f–king with me in the papers and everything, I’m going to run,” a laughing Ritchie said. “And I’m going to go to f–king DC, I’m going to beat the sh*t out of Debbie — whatever the f–k her name is — and then I’m going to go to D.C. and I’m going to smack the living sh*t out of all of them motherf–kers on the Hill.”

It’s a terrible loss that we’ll never get to hear him deliver an “I’ll smack the sh*t out of you” floor speech aimed at Chuck Schumer. Oh well. Republicans’ loss is Democrats’ gain: The path is now clear for Senator Eminem.